The present invention relates to stringed instruments and, more particularly, to stringed instruments having a fingerboard therein.
Stringed instruments are of ancient origin. During the succeeding centuries, many forms of such instruments have been developed. Many of these instrument forms are configured having a relatively narrow neck structure. That neck structure very commonly has an end at which the instrument strings are attached in such a manner as to permit adjusting the tension thereof, and has another end affixed to a body on which a bridge or saddle is provided to secure the opposite ends of these strings. The neck typically also has a structural portion having an exposed surface below the strings which is referred to as a fingerboard.
In the development of such instruments, fingerboards have resulted therefor that are either of the fretted type, or the fretless type, depending on the particular instrument in which it is located. A fretted fingerboard has a series of elongated narrow structures spaced apart from one another that project above a larger, major fingerboard surface. Each member of this series of structures has its axis of elongation provided transversely to the major axis of the neck, and each is located at a precise location along the length of the fingerboard.
The purpose of these structures is to permit the musician using the instrument to shorten the effective length of the vibrating portion of a string positioned thereover. That musician is enabled to repeatedly select the effective lengths of the string at precise points, each of which is determined using the fret chosen by the musician for this purpose, to thereby alter the pitch or frequency of the sound produced by the vibrating string. If the musician stops the string against the fingerboard major surface on the side of the fret opposite the bridge or saddle, the string will also be stopped against that fret and a precise vibration frequency in the string can thus be set determined by the distance of the fret from that bridge or saddle.
In a fretless fingerboard, the string is stopped against the fingerboard surface by the musician wherever the musician chooses, and the resulting vibration frequency of that portion of the string between this stop point and the bridge or saddle is determined by the precise position of the point at which the string is stopped. Thus, there is no fret to stop the string against to provide a corresponding fixed frequency of vibration of the string and the vibration frequency will change slightly with slight shifts in the stop point chosen by the musician's finger placement.
As a result, the point at which the string is stopped in a fretless fingerboard is more critical in determining the resulting vibration frequency of the string than is the point at which it is stopped in a fretted fingerboard, the latter requiring only that the string be stopped behind the fret to give a known frequency associated with that fret. Hence, a considerably wider range of frequencies for a vibrating string can be selected by a musician playing a fretless fingerboard than can be selected by a musician playing a fretted fingerboard. In the latter situation, the number of different frequencies which can be provided by a string over a fretted fingerboard is, as a general matter, equal to the number of frets provided.
The set of available frequencies for a string, or available tones, are thus more or less fixed in number to a relatively few such tones over a fingerboard with frets. Those tones, or frequencies, are determined by the distance between each of the frets provided and that means used for affixing the other end of the strings to the instrument body, such as a bridge or saddle. The set of these tones available for a string in a fretted fingerboard is termed its tonal scale. This tonal scale is predetermined by the placement of the frets along the fingerboard, and a substantial number of possible placements and tone scales are possibilities from which to choose. A common choice for guitars, for instance, is the so-called "equal tempered scale" which corresponds to a particular pattern of placements of the frets along the fingerboard.
However, other tonal scales are employed in some kinds of music. Thus, there is a desire for alternative tonal scales being available for a stringed instrument having a fingerboard with frets. Although these can be provided easily enough by a musician playing a fretless fingerboard, a fretted fingerboard having permanently emplaced frets presents a much more difficult problem. Among the solutions offered for this problem are substitutable fingerboards and movable frets. These are obviously at least somewhat time consuming in being implemented for each newly chosen tonal scale.
In addition, certain playing techniques for varying pitch are desired to give unusual acoustical results, particularly in jazz and rock music. Also, in such music, other kinds of sounds are desired to be generated which result from "slapping" the strings with the thumb or "popping" the strings by pulling on them. New sounds from these methods will result when used on a fretless fingerboard differing from the sounds obtained using them on a fretted fingerboard as has been done traditionally, but these new sounds are desired in conjunction with the ability to provide the fixed tones available from a fretted fingerboard. Thus, there is a desire to provide a fingerboard in which all of these capabilities are present and available to a musician.